How to Create Your First HTML and XML Sitemap

Instead of manually creating sitemaps, consider using A1 Sitemap Generator Our sitemapper software has a rich set of options, and can create sitemaps of almost any website, even very large ones.

While this sitemaps tutorial is broad in scope, we have also written step-by-step tutorials on how to create HTML sitemaps and generate XML sitemaps. If you are mainly interested in one of these things, you can jump right ahead to those.

• A1 Sitemap Generator opens in Scan website > Paths.
• Set option Website domain address and/or directory path to your website domain address or directory root.
• Hit the button Start scan and wait until it has finished.

• Select Create sitemap
• Set option Sitemap file kind to build to XML Sitemap : Sitemaps Protocol (Google Sitemaps).
• Hit the button Build now and wait a few seconds.
• The XML sitemap file is automatically shown and saved to the chosen path.
• Upload the XML sitemap using your favourite FTP program or the built-in FTP in A1 Sitemap Generator.

The first time you create your XML sitemap, you may also want to:

• Visit the Google sitemaps / webmaster tools website.
• Signup for a Google account you can use with your sitemap.
• Tell Google about your XML sitemap and verify ownership of it.

An easy way to inform search engines of your XML sitemap is to add the following line to robots.txt file: Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml.

You may also want to read about priority values in XML sitemaps. A1 Sitemap Generator defaults to automatically calculate these values for you based on all internal links in the website scanned. We have written an article about XML Google sitemaps and priority values.

• Select Create sitemap
• Set option Sitemap file kind to build to HTML template sitemap.
• Hit the button Build now and wait a few seconds.
• The HTML sitemap file is automatically shown and saved to the chosen path.
• Upload the HTML sitemap using A1 Sitemap Generator or some FTP software tool.

If you want to know more about how to control link anchor text generated in HTML sitemaps, customize the sitemap template and layout, have HTML sitemap span multiple pages etc. you can read all about these options in our HTML sitemap generator article.